Tarantino's Case for Style over Substance (Abuse)

          There’s just something riveting about Amanda Plummer. She’s ugly as sin, but you just can’t look away. And I’ll never forget the first time I saw her lecherously hiss, “That’sss a lot of walletsss.  Pre-tty sssmart.” Tim Roth’s initiation of the diner robbery that bookends the film merely serves as a platform for Plummer’s frenetic delivery of one of the film’s signature lines: “Any of you pigs move! And I’ll execute every last muther fuckin one of ya!”  The frame freezes on Plummer and surfs straight into Dick Dale’s finger slide entrance to his iconic “Miserlou.”

The first time I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, the opening felt like plunging over the first peak of a roller coaster.  It was the sort of vivid and visceral movie-going experience I’ve had only a handful of times—Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, Eastwood’s Unforgiven—one of those times when you know full well that you are seeing a special film for the very first time. And you just don’t want it to end. [continued after the break: click "read more"]

Tree-Hugger: An (Online) Genealogy of Morals

How can I possibly be related to you?

Recently I was shocked to learn that, not only theologians, but scientists now assert that every last human being on the planet—white and black, Christian and Muslim, Cardinal fan and Cub fan alike—are all—yes, ALL!—descended from a single female, dubbed “Mitochondrial Eve” by geneticists, and a single male, “Y-chromosome Adam.”  I stumbled upon this astonishing scientific fact in a Jeremy Rifkin talk animated by the Royal Society for the Arts.  Rifkin’s idea is that, since we are all related, it may be possible for all of humanity to identify as one large family. I’m skeptical.

And before you run off half-cocked to start spreading the “good news” that the Bible had it right all along, allow me to burst your bubble: scientists believe that the genetic “Eve” lived about 200 thousand years ago whereas “Adam” lived only 60 thousand years ago.  How does this happen?  I’m not exactly sure, but Adam must have been quite the Casanova in a small, yet uniquely successful population entirely descended from Eve.  Frankly, I find a large degree of peace in that 150 thousand year gap, for it avoids the truly frightening question posed by literal Creationism: where did Seth’s wife come from?  For there is only one answer to THAT question: she would have had to have come from the same place that Seth, Cain, and Able came from. A sister. Or, even worse: Seth procreated with Eve herself. Ug. Ew. Yikes!

"Calvin Klein! Isn't he a dreamboat?"

And of course incest is the fundamental taboo upon which civilization depends.  Don’t believe me? Just go ask Freud or Oedipus…or Marty McFly.  No, no, kids, the fundamental taboo is not murder. In fact, according to Freud the threat of capital punishment was first used to prevent—you guessed it—incest. We are just fine with killing certain people in certain situations, but the mere contemplation of mommy-son action is enough to make us wanna gouge our own eyes out or, dare I even mention, listen to Huey Lewis songs. Gag me! But don’t worry: the genetic Adam, his many partners, and their progeny were probably cousins…very distant cousins.  Whew! …though incest would certainly go a long way toward explaining the nightly news. [continued after the break: click "read more"]

New American Gothic: Hardboiling the Coen Brothers

Among the numerous fringe benefits of my profession, I get to concoct harebrained schemes; but not only do I cook them up: I indulge them, make them realities…well, realities in my head. And the fun doesn’t end there, kids: before I think them through, I like to go and share them with people. We’ll call it stunt blabbing or daredevil gum-flapping.

The primary victim of my struggle to delineate between reality and fantasy happens to be my department chair.  She’ll be sitting in her office at a desk over-flowing with work wearing either a look of deep concentration or “where the hell do I even begin,” and all of a sudden I’ll pop my head into her open door: “Hey, Karen! I’ve got an idea!” I have to admit, I get a kick out of her jumping about two feet out of her chair. I mean, if she didn’t want to be interrupted by me, she shouldn’t have left her door open, right?  I’ve noticed that she’s given up coffee since hiring me.

That was a few years back and by now she’s figured out how to better deal with me.  Rather than rationally explain to me why I can’t teach Beowulf in Old English or take a class on a field trip to Seattle to reenact the WTO protests, she merely waits for me to finish, after which she calmly distracts me back to world of reality. “Proctor, have you given that 101 class their grammar diagnostic yet?” So, the other day, instead of even seeming to notice that I’d just proposed teaching Ulysses in my freshman composition course, she asks me if I have a DVD copy of The Source, a biopic about the Beat Poets starring Dennis Hopper, Johnny Depp, and John Turturro.

“Never heard of him,” she says.

“Who? Kerouac?!”

“No! That last one…Turtle.”

“Oh, Turturro?  He’s been in lots of stuff.  He was the racist son in Do the Right Thing.” She’s starting to put a face to the name.  “He was in Miller’s Crossing.”  I’m losing her.  “He was the Jesus in The Big Lebowski.” Nothing. “He’s been in a bunch of Coen Brothers’ films!” Eyeroll.

“Ooohhhh, the Cooowwwen Brothers. It’s a generational thing.  You young people and your Coen Brothers.” Huh? The Coen Brothers are “a generational thing”?  At first, the idea struck me as odd, but the more I thought about it, the more is seemed downright preposterous. So, I did some research, and, turns out, the Brothers’ last three films—in a row!—have been nominated for the Academy Award^® for Best Picture, and No Country For Old Men won the award (for which the Brothers also won Best Director).  One of the three—A Serious Man—received no marketing and featured no star power, yet is still a truly great film. A fourth—the absolutely unforgettable Fargo—was nominated for the award in the 90s. In addition, some of their best work has received no recognition from the Academy. [continued after the break: click "read more"]

From Costa Rica to Costa Coffee: Bad Coffee is better than No Coffee

            When I was small, my parents made a family brunch just about every Sunday.  It never struck me as strange then, but looking back it seems a grander production than was justified by our little family of four.  I can still smell the plates of scrambled eggs, the crispy bacon layered over paper towels, bowls of stringy hash browns, the grapefruit halves, blueberry muffins, orange juice, tomato juice, and, of course, coffee, pots and pots of percolated coffee.

            After the meal I would dally at the kitchen table with my parents because it seemed part of the family ritual, a ritual organized around coffee.  For as far back as I can remember (I must have been only 3 or 4), my parents would drink coffee and talk, and I would drink “nick nick” and listen.  I was under the impression that “nick nick” was half-coffee, half-milk; I later found out that instead of coffee, my mother had substituted black tea. Humph! When they were kids, back in the good ol’e days before cigarettes caused cancer, I’m pretty sure they got the real deal.  But what difference does that make? For a four year old, the amount of caffeine in black tea was certainly something, and I had already begun to identify as a “coffee person.” Indeed these were the innocent days of what has become a caffeinated life. And little did I know then that coffee would play such a crucial role in forming my sophisticated, worldly identity.

            I can’t remember my first cup of coffee, but I do remember shifting from taking sugar to going without as far back as high school. You see, I’m a man of refined tastes. I own a Chemex and a cafétiere. Any coffee drinker worth her cream knows that coffees are as complex and wondrous as any fine wine out there: I once had an Ethiopian that began tart like apples but finished with the strangest note ever. What is that that? Is that a hint of…blueberry? And to this day I’m just a coffee and milk guy, a purist, an evangelist of the whole bean. Nothing fills me with more dread than the thought that I might accidentally ingest sweetened coffee. Seriously. And don’t get me started on “flavored” coffees.  Coffee already has flavor: that’s why I love it.  A Sumatran coffee tastes nothing like a Kenyan or Colombian or Hawaiian. With the natural variance of coffees from around the globe, who needs the addition of Hazelnut or Cinnamon? Or both?!  “Flavored” coffees are for politicians, heretics, and felons.  “Flavoring” coffee is like doodling on a Van Gogh or tinkering with a line of Shakespeare. It’s perfect as it is….  [continued after the break: click "read more"]

On Dave Grohl’s Best Day

WE WERE STANDING in the kitchen of his London townhouse when Mok said something like, “We’re going to Milton-Keynes.” I gave him a blank stare. Milton-Keynes? I had not run across the name in my tourism research. Was this some tennis facility named after a 17^th century poet and a 20^th century economist? After all, it was the day of the men’s Wimbledon final. What does a poet have to do with tennis? Mok was beaming a childlike ear-to-ear grin. “Do you want me to just tell you then? We’re going to the Foo Fighters’ concert at the Milton-Keynes Bowl, mate!  Surprised?” We’re going to see who doing what in the where?

          In the midst of my confusion, I instinctively scanned my repertoire of polite-lies-to-tell, selecting, “Oh, thanks. I like the Foo Fighters.” Foo Fighters?  Really?  Freakin’ Foo Fighters?  Don’t get me wrong: I came of age in a flannel shirt…but times have changed.  About all that remains of my teen angst are three holes I don’t wear earrings in anymore.  Once upon a time, my ideal Saturday night involved at least two illegal activities; but I’m just more interested in Sunday mornings these days.  Now, I wouldn’t have had to work so hard to plaster a goofy grin of gratitude on my face if Mok had said we were going to Soundgarden or Primus…or Pearl Jam…or even Alice in Chains with that new singer…or maybe even the Smashing Pumpkins with just a baldheaded Billy Corigan as the only original member.  (Honestly, I’d prefer Alanis Morrisette to Foo Fighters.)

            At this moment, dear reader, you may be wondering what it is I have against the Foo Fighters.  I can probably best explain by going back in time, or at least into my memories of time, a memory of 17 years ago when I wore flannel, mutton chops, long hair, hoop earrings, and Doc Martins….

In 1994 I had just figured out that I didn’t know everything, but I was still convinced that no one over the age of 30 knew much of anything.  I was a freshman in college living in San Diego, and the best part about living in San Diego was that I could see just about any band play so long as I was willing to hitch a ride on a modest road trip.  That year I saw Pink Floyd at Jack Murphy stadium, Rush at the San Diego Sports Arena, and Pearl Jam at the San Diego Civic Center.  Late in the summer I saw Bad Religion open for Neil Young and Pearl Jam (that’s right, I saw them twice) at Golden Gate Park.  I saw Hole at a club called Soma, Primus at the Delmar Fairgrounds, and Sublime on the UCSD campus. Come to think of it, I also saw The Ramones, Skankin’ Pickle, They Might Be Giants, No Doubt, and fIREHOSE at free shows on the UCSD campus.  Let’s just say I saw so many bands that I can’t remember them all and you haven’t heard of them all.  But the show I was looking forward to above all others was Lollapalooza headlined by Dave Grohl’s band, not Foo Fighters of course, not a grunge band but the grunge band: Nirvana.  And everyone knows that Kurt Cobain on his worst day is better than Dave Grohl on his best day.

            The choice of Nirvana, the iconic grunge band, as headliner of Lollapalooza was a natural one.  At that time, Lollapalooza was a touring music festival.  Rather than a multiday concert in Chicago, Gen Xers across the nation could witness Perry Farrell’s redefinition of the mainstream one day and one city at a time. Some kids even followed the tour. And now that Jane’s Addiction had disbanded, the festival needed an iconic headliner, needed Nirvana, to keep it going.  And I was going to see it.  But as you know, Kurt Cobain shot himself in the spring of 1994.  I’m sure he was having a pretty bad day.

Ob-la-di ob-la-da, life goes on.  The tour’s organizers decided to replace Nirvana at the top of the bill.  So, when I handed my ticket marked “Nirvana” to the ticket taker at the gate to the CSU-Dominguez Hills campus, I was really going to see a dual headliner of Smashing Pumpkins and The Beastie Boys.  And Dave Grohl was unemployed. That was all a long time ago….

They say that every 7 years each cell in your body (with the exception of the central nervous system) has been replaced: every seven years you are a new you.  And if I was working my way to Aaron 3.0 in 1994, I have now just finished becoming Aaron 5.0: Mr. Proctor.  I’ve traded contemporary grunge for intellectual prep, Docs for Sketchers, Dickey’s for designer jeans, and I no longer have chain attached to my wallet. For cris’sakes, I’m a dad now. I wasn’t in England to stand way too close to thousands or half-naked people, urinating outdoors, walking around looking for the damn funnel cake tent. Where’s the goddamn funnel cake?! I had invested an ungodly amount of time and money to participate in a conference, a literary conference, a poetry conference.  I had written a paper! Hello?  I was to supplement this serious endeavor with some rather solemn literary rituals: a visit to Westminster Abbey to visit Chaucer’s grave, a play at the New Globe, reverential visits to the Shelleys’ Albion House (where Mary wrote Frankenstein), Keats’ home on Hampstead Heath, and an out-and-out pilgrimage to the Lake District and Dove Cottage.  This trip was to be an act of joining with the great bordering on the spiritual. But there I was, in the Milton-Keynes Bowl, half-naked, eating funnel cake, in desperate need of a clean bathroom.

"Boy, there sure are a fucking lotta ya'," says Grohl.

And we’re not talking a paltry few thousand here. Apparently, Foo Fighters are mighty well liked in the UK.  Though we arrived at 3 PM for an 8 PM concert we had to park more than a mile away from the Bowl.  We trudged in a continuous line of thirtysomethings dressed like twentysomethings along a wooded path strewn with empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and remnants of fast food.  Occasionally groups of men would stager into and out of the woods adjusting their zippers. The heaps of garbage grew in proportion to the stench of urine as we came closer to the venue. The hike quickly became a metaphor for the (failed?) maturation of my generation.

When we arrived at the Bowl, we found a long line waiting to enter a venue surrounded with innumerable food and beverage tents, circus performers, and carnival rides.  A monstrous Ferris wheel peeked from the trees on the horizon; it spun next to a mammoth flag pole flying both the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes.  When we finally wove our way into the Bowl, we found ourselves among a sea of sixty-five thousand people.  (I would go to see U2 (the band that Bono is in!) later in the summer, and they didn’t play to sixty-five thousand.)  And this was the second show: Foo Fighters had drawn sixty thousand the day before.  “Isn’t this great?!”  Mok was beaming.

Jimmy Eat World has taken the stage as will Death Cab for Cutie and Biffy Clyro in the ensuing hours. We find an acceptable plot off to the portside of the sound tent: we are near a concession stand and a bank of port-a-loos; we have just enough room to sit on the ground between acts. All the while more and more Brits are packing in closer and closer to the stage, making it harder and hard for them to return with umpteen alcoholic beverages from the banks of tents clearly marked “BAR” that flank either side of the bowl.  Here and there fights break out.  Men hoist “girls” dressed in outfits that they haven’t fit into for at least 10 years (did they ever fit into them?) upon their shoulders. Some “girls” fall, some go crowd surfing, and a growing number pass out in shaded areas.  Small groups of younger fans sit in circles smoking hash.  By the time Biffy Clyro is finished, I am starting to notice women off to the side vomiting, and not all of them have a friend to hold the hair out of their face.  Did I mention that I don’t drink anymore?  Did I mention that I’m a dad for cris’sake!?  This is a complete fiasco.  How did I tolerate these people in my youth? Mok is having a ball, pumping his fist, singing along.  Did he go off and smoke some of that hash while I wasn’t looking?

Grohl plays at the Milton-Keynes Bowl in July, 2011

And here comes Grohl with what looks to be a metallic-blue, hollow-bodied Gibson of some sort.  Here he comes running up and down this catwalk thing that he always has jutting out into the crowd.  He frantically strums a D-chord and then puts his hand to his ear like he’s Hulk Hogan or something.  Are all these rockstars from some alternate universe free from male pattern baldness and grey hair?  “Boy, there sure are a fuckin’ lotta ya.” Grohl is drinking a beer now, and he seems genuinely surprised. In fact, he seems more surprised than I am at the raucous crowd brimming out of the Milton-Keynes Bowl.

Then they launch into a song.  They have a million songs, and I can’t think of one but I know ‘em all.  They’ve got the one about the hero and the one that sounds like the hero song and the one that sounds like that one too.  Oh, and they have “Everlong”: I know that one…that one’s actually pretty good.  And I know “Big Me,” but they don’t play that one.  Between songs Grohl engages in “crowd participation.”  Usually, he runs up and down that catwalk.  Sometimes the crowd goads him into chugging a beer.  But mostly, he repeatedly expresses shock and amazement at the size of the crowd.  They have never headlined a show this big.  And that’s when it occurs to me that I have seen Foo Fighters before. How did I manage to forget until now? It was spring 1995 I think. Mike Watt had left fIREHOSE and was doing a solo tour of small—really small—clubs. Grohl was his 2^nd drummer; Pat Smear and Eddie Vedder (yes, that Eddie Vedder) were playing guitar. Opening were Vedder’s side project, Hovercraft, and Grohl’s new band. They hadn’t released an album yet. There were about 300 people there. It was fun I guess.

So, you’ve come a long way Dave Grohl. And, with sixty-five thousand rabid Foo-heads here just for him, it seems that this is in fact Dave Grohl’s best day ever. And I’m here to see it. And on Dave Grohl’s best day, he is no Kurt Cobain.  Look at him running around up there.  Chugging beer. Having fun. This isn’t grunge: it’s grunge on Prozac. These songs are all pretty and indistinct and…and…fun. This crowd isn’t angst-ridden. You aren’t even Gen-X anymore: you’re all on Prozac.

Look at Grohl chugging another beer. That’s like the fourth one. They go away and come back for an encore. And. They. Just. Keep. Playing. There they go. And now he’s back again, just him and a guitar telling us all how much this concert means to him. Now he’s going to do something that he hasn’t done on stage for a very long time: he’s going to play drums. The crowd goes wild. But he’s not going to play with Foo Fighters; he’s invited out bluesman Sea Sick Steve to play guitar and sing and John Paul Jones (yes, that John Paul Jones) to play bass.  And they do a real deep grooving delta rocking blues number. And Dave Grohl is no Kurt Cobain, and I’m a dad. And Mok and I live on different continents. And we’re both getting old. And I discover that we are both having fun on Dave Grohl’s best day. And Cobain has been dead a long time now. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da….